Convening during COVID-19: Lessons learnt from organizing virtual workshops in 2020

TL;DR

This paper shares lessons learned from organizing a virtual WiML 'Un-Workshop' at ICML 2020, providing insights to help future organizers host successful online events during pandemic conditions.

Contribution

It offers a detailed account of organizing a virtual workshop during COVID-19, highlighting practical strategies and challenges faced, which is a novel contribution for virtual event planning in this context.

Findings

Effective virtual engagement strategies identified

Challenges of online event coordination discussed

Recommendations for future virtual workshops provided

Abstract

This report is an account of the authors' experiences as organizers of WiML's "Un-Workshop" event at ICML 2020. Un-workshops focus on participant-driven structured discussions on a pre-selected topic. For clarity, this event was different from the "WiML Workshop", which is usually co-located with NeurIPS. In this manuscript, organizers, share their experiences with the hope that it will help future organizers to host a successful virtual event under similar conditions. Women in Machine Learning (WiML)'s mission is creating connections within a small community of women working in machine learning, in order to encourage mentorship, networking, and interchange of ideas and increase the impact of women in the community.